Come All You Tonguers

DESCRIPTION: "Come all you tonguers and land-loving lubbers, Here's a job cutting in and boiling down blubbers." The singer declares, "Go hang the Agent!" because "I am paid in soap, and sugar, and rum" for all his hard word as the Agent and Company get rich
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1967 (Bailey/Roth-ShantiesByTheWay-NZ); reportedly collected by John Leebrick in the 1920s
KEYWORDS: worker hardtimes whaler money
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Bailey/Roth-ShantiesByTheWay-NZ, p, 14, "Come All You Tonguers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colquhoun-NZ-Folksongs-SongOfAYoungCountry, p. 16, "Come All You Tonguers" (1 text, 1 tune) (p. 9 in the 1972 edition)
Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ, p. 49, "Come All You Tonguers" (1 text)
Tod-WhalingInSouthernWaters, p. 126, "Come All You Tonguers" (1 text)
NOTES [530 words]: According to NewZealandDictionary, p. 294, a "tonguer," in whaling, referred to "One who, for his work of cutting in whales or abandoned whale carcasses or parts of them, received the oil of the tongue (also of other parts) in payment." Rickard, p. 82, explains, "When the dead whale had been towed back to the station, it was hauled up by windlass up the planked way, where the blubber was cut off in pieces a foot or two square. This task was in the hands of the 'tonguer,' so called because he was paid with the oil of the whale's tongue, also from its heart and intestines, as a perquisite for the duties which he performed, duties which required a considerable amount of skill."
Bailey and Roth explain this as a song of the shore whalers of the 1820s and 1830s. These whalers worked close to shore, but it was apparently their payment method resembled a company store: They "were paid their wages in goods which were marked against their account," so it was hard for them to leave the job. This could be true even of the relatively well-paid tonguers; Rickard, p. 86, describes how several workers, including a tonguer, found themselves in debt to the company at the end of a term of service. These particular problems were probably especially bad in New Zealand, because workers were generally paid a percentage of the value of the oil and whalebone taken on the voyage, based on the price in New Zealand -- and the price in the South Seas was generally only about a quarter what the products would be worth back in Britain.
Morton, p. 240, says that in addition to their skills in cutting up whales, tonguers were also responsible for interpreting for the Maori who worked with the whales. (Which leads to an interesting question: Were they called "tonguers" because they were paid in tongue oil or because they spoke a foreign tongue?) Morton also states that tongue oil was less valuable than oil from the blubber -- but it was easy to account for it, which probably explains why it was given to the tonguers rather than giving them a share of the total oil.
Morton, p. 241, quotes a verse of this and says that it is "believed to have been composed in the 1830s at Heberley's station at Port Underwood." Given that the 1830s was the heyday of New Zealand whaling -- indeed, almost the only decade in which it was active -- the date is probably right, but I don't know why it is associated with Port Underwood. Heberley was "an experienced shore whaleman" (Morton, p. 231), and he apparently served as a translator (Morton, p. 268), but he was far less important than (e.g.) the Weller Brothers or Johnny Jones. Perhaps there is something in his reminiscences, which are apparently found in manuscript in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington (based on the bibliography entry on p. 368 of Morton).
Like the better-known "Davy Lowston," although this is considered a New Zealand song, it was collected by John Leebrick, who did his work in the United States. (For background on this, see the notes to "Davy Lowston.") The history behind it was the subject of an article by Frank Fyfe, first published in Maorilander, parts 1-4 (1970-1971); I have not seen it. - RBW
Bibliography

Morton: Harry Morton, The Whale's Wake, University of Otago Press/University of Hawaii Press, 1982
NewZealandDictionary: Elizabeth and Harry Orsman, The New Zealand Dictionary, 1994; second edition 1995 (I use the 2003 New House Publishers paperback)
Rickard: L. S. Rickard, The Whaling Trade in Old New Zealand, Minerva Lid. Publishers, 1965

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File: BaRo014

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